


good turns

by bluecloak



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Hamiathes' Gift Exchange, Implied/Referenced Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 15:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11854434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecloak/pseuds/bluecloak
Summary: Kamet meets the finest sandal polisher in all of Attolia, unfortunately.





	good turns

Things are different in Attolia. Kamet likes to think he is unflappable, but he keeps finding himself at a loss.

People here do not seem to know what to do with him. Either they insult him in that particularly blunt Attolian way, or warily scrutinize him until he feels like some new piece of sculpture that no one can decide is good or not. Commoners are appointed officers in their queen’s own guard, but people look askance at him for being a slave—never mind that he is an _educated_ one. Meanwhile, he has doubts on whether most Attolians can even read. Even those of the queen’s court seem to take more pride in how much poetry they have memorized by tongue rather than written on paper.

Although it is all is scrupulously maintained, everything in Attolia seems to model after the old: its columns, its poetry, even its queen, who looks as though some ancient goddess stepped off a relief from one of the palace’s friezes.

The palace itself, for all its Attolian simplicity, is like a maze. Kamet spends his first week there cursing its architect.

Faces of old gods and heroes he can’t name watch Kamet from faded frescoes as he walks through the halls. The weather isn’t so different from Ianna-Ir’s, but quicker to change. The honey they serve with tea is of course still sweet, but tastes of different flowers. He doesn’t get lost anymore, but the sting of having to learn his way is fresh and new.

And, rather than berries, there are boys growing whole from the garden bushes.

Well, one bush. And, in fairness, it is only one boy, but Kamet’s patience has been worn parchment-thin.

“What,” says Kamet, pausing on the pebbled path to squint at him through an armful of scrolls, the bright afternoon sun, and his own dubious eyesight.

The boy startles in a movement as quiet and slight as a sparrow shaking its wings out and whips his head around to look at Kamet, the wild black of his hair shedding stray leaves. There is the crook of a scar under his eye.

They stare at each other in a moment of brief but acute discomfort.

“Ah,” says the boy, blinking. He raises a finger to his lips. “ _Shh_. I’m hiding.”

Kamet has things to do. He should go, and this is none of his business, and it seems to be business of a wayward nature, besides.

“From what?” he asks, unfortunately. Damn it.

“Torment. Suffering. Pits of despair.”

Kamet squints some more.

“Well.” The boy plucks a single leaf from his hair, for all the good it does. “ _Someone_ has to stir the vats of piss in the laundry today, I heard.”

“...Not you, then?”

“Oh, no.” A grin. “Surely not.”

He leans luxuriously back in the bush as if it were a throne, bothered by neither the prickling branches nor the confession of his delinquent behavior, and tilts his head at Kamet.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asks innocently, making a vague gesture at Kamet’s scrolls. “Though the gardens are big enough for two fugitives, certainly.”

Kamet narrows his eyes. “I’m sure they are.”

He shifts the scrolls in his arms with a fastidious little motion and walks away, making sure not to hurry until he is well out of sight.

_Attolians._

 

 

“Yes, with ginger,” Kamet says, fighting the urge to yawn.

Tarra takes the laden tray from his hands and gives him a sympathetic look. “Has your master caught that awful cold going around too? I swear, we’ve been ferrying tea to half the palace all night.”

Kamet nods. Nahusaresh had caught it, and he was even more particular than usual when he was ill. He’d called for some tea, but then it had been the wrong kind, so he sent Kamet down to the kitchens to sort it out. It’s another thing he doesn’t like about Attolia. Back in Ianna-Ir, Kamet may have been a slave but he was still his master’s secretary, and there were other slaves to manage the business of tea-fetching. Here, he is the only slave in Nahusaresh’s retinue and has to take on responsibilities in triple. The extra work leaves him tired, but more than anything it chafes at his pride.

He thanks Tarra as she bustles off to make a new pot of tea. She must be tired too, he knows, but she still manages to be quick on her feet.

It’s early enough in the morning to still technically be called night. Kamet is in the habit of rising early, but at this hour he is still muzzy with sleep. The kitchen staff, on the other hand, has been up and moving for hours already. He doesn’t envy them. Kamet smothers another yawn and tries to will himself awake. The thought of returning to bed afterwards is tempting, but unrealistic. It will be better to get a head start on the day now, and he should be ready anyway with his master feeling poorly.

Harried servants rush around like anxious bees, briskly directed by cooks wielding ladles like halberds and prodigiously-sharpened tongues. The infinite tumult of kitchens is something Kamet is familiar with at least. He knows everything is more or less one ill-placed cooking pot away from disaster, so he tries to keep out of the way. That is probably why he sees _him_ when no one else does.

It is the same boy from the gardens, Kamet is sure. He weaves neatly through the chaos like a silver needle through cloth, popping up behind a table full of food to filch two fig buns from a plate of pastries. He sticks one in his mouth and the other down his shirt.

Their eyes meet just as Kamet’s face begins to shifts into its well-worn and much-feared (at least in Ianna-Ir) expression of disapproval.

Before he can say anything, Tarra returns with the tray and neatly eclipses his view of the boy.

“Here you go, Kamet,” she says as she hands it off. There is a new pot of tea, a plate of the very same fig buns, and an extra cup, already poured and fragrant with ginger.

Kamet blinks.

“Drink up,” Tarra chides. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“Oh,” says Kamet, words stumbling in his mouth. “Thank you.”

Over her shoulder, the boy winks at him in an _astonishingly_ irritating fashion and makes his great escape.

 

 

It’s been a long few days, and they’re likely to be a little longer still. Kamet’s fingers are stained with ink, and his wrists and back ache from hours spent writing hunched over his desk. As he trudges down to the kitchens, all he can think about is getting enough coffee in him to stay upright.

He hears some shouting from a good distance away that, of course, only grows worse the closer he gets. He pokes his head cautiously through the doorway and narrowly avoids being hit in the face with a flying whisk by ducking right back out again.

“ _You little monster!”_

It sounds like Onarkus, the head of the kitchens. Well, in that case, maybe the coffee can wait—

Suddenly, there’s a yelp and _that_ sounds like Onarkus too, and against his better judgement, Kamet peers around the doorway again.

There, indeed, is Onarkus, red-faced with fury, though that is nothing new. But there too, clinging to his arm, thrashing like a cat in a cage, and sinking his teeth into it like that same cat would a rat, is the boy from the gardens.

Onarkus yells again and tries to throw him off, already raising his hand for another blow, but the boy is faster and he manages to twist out of the way. There is a ringing clash of various kitchen things being thrown, but through it all Kamet hears him laughing at Onarkus. Something else hits the doorway and Kamet ducks out again just as the boy runs past him, shouting back colorful swears. Their shoulders bump, and he disappears down the hall.

A quick peek into the kitchens reveals only complete and utter bedlam, smelling faintly of toast. Kamet decides he does not need coffee that badly and retreats.

It’s a long walk even if he hurries, so Kamet heads for the gardens instead—a shortcut. He sticks to the shade, because the day has been hot as well as long. His hands brush away long hanging leaves as he steps under a flowering arch and onto the little pebbled path.

The stones crunch underfoot, and the boy under the trees looks up at the noise.

Kamet steps back instinctively. “Oh, I—sorry, I didn’t see you—”

“It’s alright.” He is sitting in the shade of the plum trees, a wall of tall, trimmed shrubbery behind them. If he hadn’t moved, it’s unlikely Kamet would have noticed him at all.

Despite himself, Kamet approaches. The boy looks for all intents and purposes perfectly at ease and unaffected by what has just happened, but Kamet can see the stiffness in his back and the way he leans his weight more to one side than the other.

“I thought you’d have somewhere to be,” he says to Kamet with more pointedness than a kitchen boy ought to have.

“I do.” Kamet shrugs. “Do you?”

A snort.

“Right.” Kamet tugs aimlessly at the hem of his shift. “That’s fine.” And he hurries off.

Though Kamet is confident that the boy has a great many places to be and his absence from them is at least one reason for his troubles, he is relieved to find him still sitting in the gardens a few minutes later.

“Here,” says Kamet without preamble, stooping to drop a small ceramic pot in the boy’s lap. “It’s a muscle ointment.”

“You came back.” A pause. He turns the little pot around and around in his brown hands. “Ointment won’t cure the fatal wounds Onarkus’s damn ladle gave me. I’m afraid you’re a bit too late for that. You’ve come all this way for a dying man.” But he makes no move to give it back.

Kamet makes a face. He wasn’t expecting a thank you, but he wasn’t expecting whatever _this_ was either. Honestly, Attolians.

“You’re speaking well enough for a corpse,” he says, and stands back up, brushing dirt from his knees. “What happened with Onarkus?”

“I bit him.”

“I know _that_. I was there.”

“No, before that. I bit him the first time too.”

Kamet stares.

“Dreadful man,” the boy continues. “Tough. Rather gamey.”

Great Anet.

“Well,” Kamet manages at last. “I’ve met Onarkus, so I suppose I understand your sentiments.” He scrunches up his nose. “Though I can’t speak for the taste.”

The boy laughs. “I can’t recommend it, no.”

_We’re not too far apart in age_ , Kamet thinks. He wonders which of them is the younger.

“It’s Kamet, isn’t it?” says the boy suddenly, looking up at him. “From Medea? I’ve seen you around.”

“I’m sure you have,” Kamet says drily. That gets him a grin this time, entirely free of shame. “And you?”

“Oh, I’m not from Medea.” At Kamet’s expression, he relents. “Fine, fine. You can call me Helenos.”

It’s a little while before Kamet can return to his work, but he thinks it is not too long. Besides, he works fast; he can always catch up tomorrow.

 

 

Two days later, Kamet finds the ceramic pot sitting on his desk, empty. There is a cup of coffee next to it.

 

 

Kamet looks expectantly across the table at Helenos. Well, no, not expectantly, but...he _thought_ there would be a little more of a reaction than this.

Helenos bites into a nut cake he absolutely isn’t supposed to have, his cheek against one hand. “So Ennikar stole the honey?”

“The stories vary—sometimes he is stopped before he can, or sometimes it is given to him. But in this version, he does.”

“Is he ever caught?”

When Kamet gives him a puzzled look, Helenos says, “In the stories I know, thieves always get caught, and then something terrible happens to them.”

“Like what?”

Helenos tells him. Kamet makes a face. He, in fact, makes many faces, but makes an exceedingly interesting one when Helenos tells him about the eagle and the liver.

“Is that more exciting?” Kamet asks, frowning.

“I don’t know about that. But I like that Ennikar gets away. All the stories I’ve been told, they always end up so _educational_. Something about my lack of moral fiber, or my bad habits, or my posture, I recall.”

Kamet watches his friend slouching like a wilting flower over the table, a smear of honey from the stolen cakes on one cheek. He doesn’t say a word.

“You are thinking something very ungenerous,” Helenos says, narrowing his eyes.

“Hm,” says Kamet.

Helenos doesn’t dignify that with further response, and asks instead, “You said there were more versions of the story. Are there very many? Have you read them all?”

“Well, they are old stories. Everyone knows them, more or less. There are several versions that have been translated from surviving tablets.”

“What about the one you told me? And—translated? Into Attolian?”

“Into Mede, of course,” Kamet says, “From Ensur, the old tongue. It is only in Attolian because _I_ translated it.”

He waits.

“Huh,” says Helenos. He finishes his cake.

“Some of the tablets only exist in fragments, so there are sometimes inconsistencies,” Kamet continues. “They’re difficult to translate because the language is so old, and parts of what we have are incomplete.”

“I suppose those people who translated them before you already did the hard part, then?” says Helenos, “Since you’re just repeating what they wrote first.”

Kamet bristles. “I know _five_ languages.”

“Hm,” says Helenos, deliberately.

“ _You_ were the one asking me before about stories before. If you don’t like mine, you can go and listen to everyone else’s instead.”

Kamet doesn’t sulk, because he is not a child. Of course.

“I didn’t say that,” says Helenos, and his voice has lost most of its joking tone. He thinks a little before speaking again. “Five, is it?”

“Six, if you count written Ensur,” Kamet says, arms crossed. “There is the original and the simplified script.”

“Six, then,” says Helenos. He attempts a smile, small and cautious. “I’ll remember next time.”

It is as much an apology as he’s going to get, Kamet supposes.

Helenos pushes the plate of cakes towards him. “So, what happens to them next?”

 

 

Helenos likes to play the fool, but if he were not as sharp as he was, he wouldn’t be able to wriggle his way out of the all trouble he made for himself. Kamet knows this well enough.

Kamet is sitting in the kitchens with a small gaggle of servants, picking his way through a quick lunch when Helenos drops into the seat beside him. He steals a bun off Tiro’s plate as Tiro halfheartedly swats him away.

“Hello, Kamet,” he says. And stops.

It takes him no time at all to notice the careful way Kamet keeps his arm tucked close to his side. Kamet sighs, but only inwardly. Then he wonders if Helenos notices that too.

He doesn’t say anything for a good ten minutes, laughing and making conversation with the others, before coming up with some excuse to gently tug Kamet away from the table. Kamet lets him, with some reluctance. Helenos gets him outside to some quiet spot in the shade and sits him down on an upturned bucket. He leaves without a word and comes back with something lumpy wrapped in wet cloth.

“Ice,” he explains when Kamet gives him a questioning look. “From the cold room. They won’t miss a little piece.” He presses it into Kamet’s hand, and Kamet puts it to where the bruising is.

He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t ask anything of Kamet. All he does is stand there trying not to scowl as Kamet attempts to keep the ice from dripping on his shift.

“At least sit down,” Kamet sighs. “Watching you is making _my_ feet hurt.”

Helenos finds a crate to sit on, and still doesn’t speak. His fingers—thin and delicate, like Kamet’s—clench uselessly in the cloth of his shirt.

After a while, Kamet says, “I don’t know many Attolian stories. Tell me one.”

 

 

“There must have been a dozen—no, two dozen guards! They didn’t let up for weeks. Of course, I was too quick for them.”

“Of course.” Kamet picks out a pomegranate seed and chews it.

“One night though, they caught me off guard—so to speak—”

Kamet groans, but Helenos continues on undaunted.

“—and one of them tried to run me through. It was lucky that he got me at all, but luckier still that he missed anything important. The doctor said the sword went in right under my heart.”

“I’m sure.”

“I put up a valiant fight, naturally, but there’s only so much you can do when half your blood is spilling out on the dirt.” Helenos gestures widely with his hands, encompassing the whole of the gardens. “So here I am. Attolia’s finest errand boy, returned.”

Kamet gives a little smile. “Here you are.”

Helenos laughs. He picks at the pomegranate, but only drops the seeds one by one onto the ground. He picks restlessly at the grass where they sit, and then at the fraying hem of his sleeve. “Actually,” he says, slowly, “I’m going to try again.”

There’s a beat.

“What?” says Kamet. “I thought that was just a story. What do you mean _again?_ ”

Helenos just looks at him.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m always serious,” says Helenos solemnly. Incredibly, there is no ominous roll of thunder nor does the earth start shaking at the telling of such an enormous and obvious lie.

“But—run away?” Kamet pushes away the half of the fruit that Helenos offers to him. He frowns. “It isn’t possible. They’ll catch you.”

Helenos plucks a bright red seed from the pomegranate heart. This time, he does eat it. “It is possible. I just told you I did it before.”

“And yet, _here you are_ ,” Kamet points out.

“They won’t catch me again," says Helenos, "And believe it or not, I don’t really take well to being a sandal polisher.”

Kamet doesn’t laugh. “Great Anet—you _can’t_.”

“I’m going to.” He says it so easily, like it means nothing at all to him, like it's already done. Kamet can’t understand it.

But he was sent to the palace to pay off his family’s debt, and everyone knew how the Attolian queen treated _those_. She dealt her justice swiftly and decisively. It wouldn't matter if his family was nobility. The fact that they had to send away a son in the first place was proof enough of that.

When Kamet reminds him of this, all Helenos says is, “She’ll hardly notice someone like me.”

 

 

Kamet goes through his belongings—carefully, always carefully—and gathers up coin enough to fill a small, plain pouch. When he presses it later into his friend's hands, he doesn't say a thing.

 

 

For a few days after, Kamet finds himself wandering to the gardens during the little free time he has, or splitting a honey cake in half at dinner before realizing there’s no reason to anymore. He keeps walking through the garden because it’s still a shortcut, and he eats everything on his plate, and he worries.

Worry isn’t new, but Kamet is capable and clever and not used to having problems he cannot resolve. Days pass, and then seasons, and all he can do is hope his friend found a way home.

 

 

 

> _Kamet,_
> 
> _Didn’t I tell you I’d escape? Well, I have. Serves you right for doubting me. Anyway...  
>  _

Kamet laughs silently, eyes crinkling. His chest fills with a long overdue relief as he reads the rest of the letter, picking through the terrible handwriting. It isn’t a messy, illegible scrawl, but instead a painfully careful script, the kind belonging to people not used to writing but who work hard at it. The letters are pressed too deeply into the paper and are clumsy and squarish. It must have taken Helenos a long time.

When he sees the other scroll unfurled, Enoclitus’s words meticulously copied in his friend’s writing, he brushes his fingers under the letters and cannot help but smile.

 

 

He is shaking from cold and dripping with seawater, but Kamet holds himself as still as he can until his master dismisses him.

It’s hard to breathe, even after he spends a good few minutes coughing up water over the side of the ship. His throat burns. He feels like he’s swallowed half the ocean. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be dry again, never mind warm.

When he’s composed himself some, he finds himself a corner well out of the way of things. Then he pulls a bottle from inside his shift where he’d tied it to himself, and takes the stopper out with unsteady fingers. It takes some work to pry the scroll out and when he unrolls it, the paper is damp. Still, apart from a few smudges, the writing is clear.

Kamet breathes out.

 

 

The King of Attolia looks at Kamet, and says, “You should call me Eugenides.”

“Have you already forgotten the name _your_ people gave me?” Kamet retorts. He doesn’t glance up from his writing.

“ _Kamet_ ,” says the king in a way that is incredibly annoying and thus familiar. “You’ve known me since I was polishing boots in the kitchen.”

Kamet honestly cannot recall ever seeing the boy he knew touch a boot with anything besides his own feet.

“You are the king,” he reminds him. “At least one of us has to worry about that, Your Majesty.”

“You sound like Costis.”

Kamet ignores him.

“I feel,” says the king after a careful moment, “like there is something you aren’t saying.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean, Your Majesty.”

Kamet can feel him scowling without even looking. Well, it serves him right.

“You’re…angry with me.”

_It must be something he is familiar with by now_ , Kamet thinks as he scribbles on.

“I can sense you thinking unkind thoughts, Kamet.”

Finally, Kamet puts his writing aside. He’d thought running into Costis’s long, stubborn silences had been bad enough, but evidently he had forgotten that the king’s own unique brand of hard-headed conversation-making bore a great resemblance to someone firing cannon at an immovable castle wall until it gave up and talked back.

He turns at last to look at the king, but refrains from saying anything just yet. Kamet likes to think he has a little more resilience against Attolians than the average castle turret.

“I have to say, I haven’t missed that terrible disapproving squint you get,” says the king idly. He tips his head to the side. “Oh, maybe a little. It’s awfully good to see you, you know. Disapproval and all.”

It is wrong to say he hasn’t changed—he _has_ , obviously. But that tone of voice, half cheeky and half open tenderness, there is no one else it could be.

Kamet...sighs. “No one likes being tricked, Your Majesty.”

The king raises an eyebrow at him.

“I know!” Kamet shuts his eyes and rubs at them. He can feel his cheeks burn. “You don’t have to say it, _I know_.”

“Well, I’ve gone and tricked you both,” says the king. “Perhaps you can join forces and be cross with me together.”

“Don’t say that.” Kamet musters up a glare. “He crossed miles for you. He went into the empire for you. He was almost eaten by a lion. Did he tell you about the lion?” He closes his eyes again. “Ugh, the lion.”

The king reaches over and tweaks his ear. Kamet makes an offended noise.

“Not just for me,” says the king.

Then he sighs too. There seems to be a lot of it going around, Kamet notices.

“He’s...” Kamet starts. He tries again, and gives up, helplessly. “He…”

“ _Yes_ , I know.” The king leans against the desk in a motion that is entirely unkingly and all wayward kitchen boy. “Poor Costis doesn’t deserve to be tricked so often.” He lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. “Of course, I’d know all about that too. You didn’t deserve to be tricked either, Kamet. I am sorry I had to, but I am not sorry you’re here.”

Kamet looks at him levelly. It still stings, it does. He thinks the king can see it too. “You were never good at apologizing.”  

The king gives a humorless little laugh. “No,” he says, simply.

 

 

These days, Kamet is busy. He has always been busy, he thinks, but it is surprising that he is busy in this way, in this place, with these people around him. The shocking, just by measure of frequency, shouldn’t shock him so much anymore. Kamet knows he is very capable. He has weathered many things, and has dealt with them accordingly.

Despite all the new work he has, Kamet is distracted. It isn’t absentmindedness. More like his thoughts are too full, numerously multiplying and overflowing in a great and anxious deluge. His head runs in useless circles, and he finds himself returning to the familiar in order to ground it. Patterns and structure have always been able to steady him. Charts written in a clean hand, the meter of poetry, coffee taken in the afternoon.

He’s kept busy, but never so busy as to not have at least a moment or two of rest. Part of it, he is sure, is the king’s doing, but Kamet too has always been good at organizing chaos.

In one such moment, with his head overfull, Kamet’s feet take him to the gardens. It's different of course, with new flowers nestled next to the old, and the trees not quite fruiting. It wasn’t spring the last time he was here.

Not knowing what to do is becoming a familiar thing too, now. And what kind of sense is that supposed to make? How is Kamet supposed to deal with not knowing how to deal with things?

He sits gingerly on a stone bench under a budding tree, where he crosses his fingers together, and crosses his ankles, and considers the contrary state of himself.

 

  
The next time, the king drops onto the bench beside him and says, “I was stabbed here, you know.”

Kamet doesn't jump. He _doesn’t_.

“Yes,” he says after only a second. “I heard.” Costis had told him after all, sounding altogether fond and deeply, deeply exasperated. Of course Kamet remembers.

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“Hiding in the bushes was going to get you into trouble eventually.” It leaves his mouth before he can think, and Kamet snaps his jaw shut rather belatedly.

The king just laughs and bumps his shoulder. “Oh, it was the assassins hiding in the bushes, not me. Should I tell you about it? Or have you heard it _all?_   I know Costis must have told you, but he leaves such a lot out.”

He grins in a way that is too familiar by far, and Kamet can’t help but be curious.

“Like what?” he asks, so the king goes ahead and tells him.

 

 

“So,” says Kamet, “Eugenides.” He tests the syllables, and finds them strange.

“My cousins call me Gen,” says the king. He is sitting in the chair across Kamet’s desk, but it’s the wrong way around because of course it is. They’ve spent a good hour going over Kamet’s notes and trying to make sense of the meeting from this morning, and the candle is starting to burn low.

Kamet can feel him watching for a reaction.

“I,” he manages, because _gods_ he can only do so much at a time, “am _not_ your cousin.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I hate it.”

Then Eugenides gets up and leans over to kiss his forehead, brief and warm. “Don’t stay up so late worrying. If you’re to worry, at least do so in bed.”

Kamet listens to him leave. He doesn't pick up his writing again, but stares at the ink bottle, the creases in the parchment, the smudges on his knuckles and his writer’s callous. He thinks about apologies, and if he’ll be just as bad at them. He thinks about where Costis might be, and thinks about the things he should do. There are a lot of thoughts.

Tomorrow, maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> s/o to @vilecrocodile for being an outstanding beta reader


End file.
